Maintaining modern technology's demands and changing customer habits is tough. When it comes to IT, many dental practices have been left behind, constrained by the limitations of their in-house technology expertise and tight budgets. However, adopting newer, more efficient technologies streamline internal processes and improves cost control. With an outsourced IT services provider, you get access to such technologies and enjoy many benefits.
#1. HIPAA Compliance Management
Dental practices must adhere to strict legal requirements — specifically HIPAA and HITECH. Regulatory bodies can audit your practice at any time, and fines for noncompliance can be costly. Recent noted settlements have amounted to $30,000-$62,500. The reputational damage caused by an incident can be even more serious.
Instead of spending many hours going over regulatory documentation, an outsourced IT provider specializing in healthcare can conduct audits on your behalf and implement effective strategies to ensure your compliance.
#2. Help Desk Support
Many dental practices are not large enough to warrant having a dedicated IT department in-house. IT specialists commanding high salaries, and on-premises technology constantly needing upgrades and maintenance can be too expensive for the average dental practice. However, you also cannot be waiting around for support when periods of unexpected technology downtime can directly compromise patient care.
Outsourced IT providers, also known as managed service providers (MSP), are bound by their service level agreements (SLA) to respond to problems before a specified deadline. They can also help you make the move to the cloud and adopt a proactive support model where downtime is kept at a minimum for a low flat monthly fee.
#3. Data Backup and Recovery
Industry regulations impose strict policies over things like data retention and deletion, which means dental practices need to retain full control over their data. At the same time, data loss remains a widespread problem for healthcare providers, which are top targets for ransomware. Other risks, such as natural disasters, hardware failures or data breaches can also lead to serious losses. A managed disaster recovery program can keep your data safe from any eventuality. Instead of relying on in-house backup systems, an outsourced IT provider can take your data to the cloud, where it will be stored with multiple redundancies in place.
#4. Round-the-Clock Monitoring
Dental practices are top targets for cybercriminals who aim to steal patient health records to sell on the dark web. Attacks can happen at any time, and they can exploit various entryways. That is why every dental practice needs an all-encompassing information security and privacy strategy that works around the clock to keep data safe. Round-the-clock monitoring adds an extra layer of protection to your practice that lies beyond conventional perimeter defense. IT providers can monitor all traffic leaving and entering your network in real time to prevent attacks before they occur.
#5. Reduced Costs
Budgetary constraints have long been one of the biggest barriers to innovation in healthcare, but things are finally starting to change thanks to outsourced IT providers. In the past, your only option was to have a go-to IT technician or a costly in-house IT department. With such an approach, it is never too long before your IT resources start buckling under the pressure of increased demand. Outsourcing typically works out to be the more affordable option. Since services are paid for on demand, there is no need to invest money in solutions you might not need. Instead, dental practices can enjoy complete cost predictability, which makes budgeting a whole lot easier.
Pact One is a managed services provider that specializes exclusively in providing IT solutions and expertise to dental practices in Las Vegas, Nevada; Portland, Oregon; Seattle, Washington; and throughout Northern and Southern California. Call us today to learn more about our worry-free dental IT solutions.
